Haunts
by SeungSeiRan
Summary: For the nights which never end. Steve-centric.


Because - as much as it's been difficult to admit - I've missed this feeling.

 **Disclaimer:** Tekken belongs to Namco.

* * *

 _Disarm you with a smile_

 _And leave you like they left me here_

 _To wither in denial_

 _The bitterness of one who's left alone_

\- Disarm, The Smashing Pumpkins

* * *

The night air had gotten in again. He'd forgotten to lock the door of his flat.

Correction: he'd left it open. Ten inches ajar.

It was the one detail that stuck out from the gritty fog of sleep that had enveloped him for all of two hours, before the shrill, hollow pulse of his phone alarm startled him awake in time for his morning jog. A chance glance at the clock above a shelf laden with past trophies reminded him that it was early yet to have his guard up.

The sun wasn't even risen. Of course it hadn't, it was bloody 5:38 or somewhat… of course it was.

 _I'm just paranoid_ , he repeated to himself with his face pressed between the folds of his pillow for the last time, under the lukewarm shower-spray with water in his mouth, blue eyes steeled into a passing reflection in a window-pane, looking at a stranger almost, except that he'd seen this face before, tasted the bitterness in that smile. _Yes, I am._

He smiled and felt wretched for no right reason.

Before he left for the day, he made sure he locked the door, key turned thrice. He kept the assuring click of the bolts sliding into place as a reminder, jostling for space with the flurries of non-matter that cottoned the inside of his head. Wasn't the first time that he'd felt this weighted. Maybe that was why he still kept running under the guise of routine and exercise. Something to do with discipline, as he recalled himself preaching in the midst of a scrummy lads' night out, surrounded by beer pong and stale chip breath.

Mostly though, he wanted to run. Anywhere: to, from, away, far…

 _Fast._

His breath hitched.

 _Faster._

He couldn't quite shake the feeling off. It was early, but there were people around. Like, coming off late shifts or one night stands, warmed up with tall cardboard cups of frothy coffee and post-coital glows. There was nobody watching…

 _Faster._

* * *

Outside, down roads that skimmed through certain boroughs in the city he'd only grown to love as a habit, where blades of grass forced their way through blistered pavement, it looked like it was going to be a brutal Autumn.

Over the years, he'd learnt to act his role and smile when he was spoken to. It was almost as much reflex as a punch to the jaw; just as effective if he was in the right mood. If he felt Brit enough, he'd probably have slunk back into the coffee-shop's warmth – something that ought to have felt no less right than a bowl of curry in a land of tea drinkers – and just let things fall into place, prosaic as a pill, dead leaves brown on the ground. But that was it though; he really hadn't been right. Right then, right here, right now, right about anything. If the little blessings counted, his lack of sleep had passed unnoticed by his trainer and manager.

He thought about it, and tried not to. There was a chill in the air that didn't bode well for these type of wanderings. He let his feet go instead, leaving them to lead him down a path he had no bearing of, weaving through a crowd starved down to a few loosely defined groups of teenagers after school, the occasional bespoke professional flitting through the gaps, shadows at length alongside his own.

And in the dark, he caught a glimpse of his reflection.

The eyes were blue; he could make that out through the mask. White shirt though; his was a more subtle shade of charcoal. He and the boy blinked at the same time. Not the most creative of Halloween costumes, paper plate cut-mask framing a narrow, weak chin. The boy was alone.

"You lost?" He was just being polite, he told himself. "Where's your Mum?"

The boy looked at him. He found himself faltering.

It was getting colder. He tried not to dwell on it.

"It's getting late… I could walk you home."

He held out his hand, reaching for the smaller one. The boy didn't take it.

This wasn't right.

"I'm sorry."

It had gone by so quiet. He might as well have been talking to himself.

"I'm going back now. Home. So should you."

His voice had fallen to a whisper. Something about the weather…

"Bye…"

The wind picked up, cutting across his retreating back as he walked, then jogged to the flat.

* * *

He checked the locks on the door five times before lying down. He'd have really been mental if he'd have gone so far as to check the ones on the windows too.

 _Ten inches ajar._ _ **Ten**_ _inches!_

Well now, if he'd ever deserved to be robbed and murdered in his sleep, that was it then, that had been the night.

A cackle escaped from beneath his bed-sheets.

Seconds later, the ache in his chest pinned the blame on the laughter gurgling at the back of his throat. A few minutes in and the insomnia took the joylessness of it all and made it crack, almost like a sob. They ought to have a prescription for that somewhere, he mused, half-delirious with black humor.

He checked the door once more before he withdrew into another dreamless night.

* * *

He couldn't say he lacked for anything: a successful career in the ring, ample opportunities beyond that, an independent life to boot. Friends made up for family; not that he'd taken much away from the foster homes that constituted the latter. Now and then, the bad memories spurted from a reopened wound, only to be gauzed and sealed away with a witty retort or a smile. He was good with women like that. The ladies loved a good laugh and a wicked smile.

He did have friends though; he had to remind himself of that. Names on his phone, speed-dial, tell 'em to hop over from across the pond or the last couple of continents, what's a few time zones between mates after all?

Non-matter again. He was supposed to be concentrating; training, in fact. Next Iron Fist, nothing but his pride on the line.

The leather bag gave in nicely: one, two, one, two. The flicker of gloved fists against solid bulk was a relief from footwork, though he could hear his heart go like a shot when his arm began to act up.

" – S'matter? Somethin' diggin' at ya?"

"Oh, you know, time of the month and all that. Blood, tampons, and werewolf claws…"

The quick, too easily assured grin alighted on his sparring partner. "Sod. You got a hairy lil' problem or somethin' screechin' to get outta the back of your closet?"

"In a manner of speaking."

With all the children milling around the places he frequented, he couldn't get the season out of his mind: black crepe-paper bats strung along community center entrances, plastic jack o'lantern tubs spilling sweets onto tacky orange displays in supermarkets, pumpkin spice-coated tongues the morning after, masks galore.

He could always make out the boy amongst the crowd. There were other faces too, almost like his, also without a name attached. Had it been that bad, not knowing that one word that was yours alone? He'd ought to know; he'd almost been a number once.

The faces that had no names, he dreamt about them sometimes. Not in the clear, oozy luminescence that he used to wake from as a boy himself, but in those short bursts of deep, blank sounds: screams.

The boy waved to him. His arm felt heavy, leaden.

And then he was gone.

* * *

In, out: the first breath after a coma.

It was half past three in the morning when he'd forfeited sleep for a run. As he laced up his trainers, he couldn't get the taste of antiseptic out from his mouth. A remnant of a bad memory, surely a nightmare. It had already slipped through with the draft, cold as his breath.

 _Breathing regulation: take deep ones. Count to ten._

Too late. He was already on the go.

An odd sense of déjà vu dawned upon him and he didn't trust it. It was the running, really. In a sense, he'd always been _on_ the run. For the longest time, as a child, he'd imagined that it'd get him somewhere supersonic like some warped vortex of time and space where a massive Hailey's comet struck the earth and blew away whatever he'd left behind him. Some days, he probably wouldn't have minded if the comet took him too. More than the ache in his arm, sometimes it was just the endlessness of bearing with it, nursing it like a particularly grimy hangover on the best days. On the worst, he took it on his feet.

No, no, he shook his head, picking up the pace.

" _I mean,_ mate _, you've made it!"_

He hated that this had become a salving mantra, more so now than ever before. It was something a radio jock – of all people – had bestowed him with, a nice gold collar-and-chain to match that shiny new Middleweight Championship belt. Couldn't complain with a throttle so heavy as good fortune. Luck, actually. He'd been luckier than the others.

That was all there was to that time. That was then.

He thought about them now, picking at a wound he couldn't touch.

More faces than letters in an alphabet, he was sure. Numbers were infinite. He knew he couldn't even attempt to count them all in his head, but he aimed for it and he saw flashes of them, pale limbs and eyes that loomed large in sunken little faces. And he'd thought survivors' guilt was something only deserved by heroes in movies, sad eyed and scars chiseled in make-up. He was beginning to regret going this way, but he kept running. Everyday.

As all things came to pass, the sun did rise again. He was the first one in at the gym, pounding away at his usual bag, forgetting the numbing chill, rinsing off the pain fist by fist.

* * *

" _I saw you that day."_

"Where? _"_

" _In the park, running."_

"You shouldn't have been out so early then."

"… _Had nowhere else to go."_

"Home."

" _I don't have one."_

"Well, you can't come with me."

" _I know."_

"Then why do you?"

* * *

The boy had taken to calling him nothing at all: just 'you'.

He sat next to him on the low brick wall, swinging toothpick legs in a breezeless afternoon. Even his skin didn't look quite right; the same dull shade as weak milk-tea, almost dusty in the shade. It was like looking at an old photo. It was quite new to him; he didn't – had never – owned any photos of himself as a child, let alone as a baby.

He couldn't tell how old the boy was either; an ageless face in a spent little body. The boy stood across from him in the pale silvery sunlight, almost translucent. The first time he had awoken to the sight, he must have shouted and the noise might have lodged itself in his throat, until the only sound that escaped him was a strangled groan. Then came the second and third times with the odd mornings when he couldn't bear the sight of the sun, and their eyes would meet from across his bedroom and he felt nothing but the dry cold spell of another lonely beginning. Then he would turn his back to the boy, rolling to the side so that he faced a blank wall.

This time was almost the same as the others.

The mattress shifted with the sound of something settling in: someone.

He kept his eyes closed.

* * *

He always woke around the same time: early, before sunrise.

He always ran the same route.

Then came a morning when he couldn't run any further, so he ducked into an alley and staggered palms out to the nearest wall. Swarm of red bricks, swaying beneath his hands, his fingers hurting from the cold.

 _Breathe_ , he willed himself. _Come now, just do it._

His knees buckled.

It felt like forever, but the sun did rise and he could look behind him to find the shadow gone.

* * *

"That's 10 stone," came the verdict. "Wha'cha livin' on, fuckin' milk and crackers?"

He watched the dial on the weighing scale quiver for a while, before stepping off, feeling a twinge at seeing the arrow swing back to zero. Judging by the dual glares pin-pointing the evidence before them, his manager and trainer wouldn't approve of humor as a reaction. The weight would come on again once he stepped up and got back on track. Could be worse; he could be starving for a change and not know for want of an appetite.

He'd been there, enough times, more recently than he wanted to, and increasingly so. But that's what training was for: keeping his mind _off_ his mind and all he had to do was tip himself forward and _go_ , right into the closest punching-bag or walk-path, and keep going, and never stop, ever.

Then it came over him, heaving and folding into his chest so that he had to stop, _had_ to. He was vaguely aware that beneath the tape coating his knuckles, his fists had loosened to the hands now braced against the rough leather of the bag before him, that he was remembering again, remembering blue and grey and white, the sterile wash of disinfected tints coloring each visit to the Labs. He remembered the soft slap of bare feet against unguarded shins, the clench of an arm round his throat, a hand that smelled of plastic and formaldehyde clapped over his mouth, the hot brand of tears, blood in his mouth, trickling from a puncture in his arm, the taste of it scorching the lining of his throat as the tube was pushed down, blood spotting the collar of his tunic afterwards, clots in the morning, no sleeping when the screams got too loud, the louder crack of a baton to bone, not a whimper to be heard, one less voice the next day, one less plea, a gurney being rolled away, sheet the color of the snow on the ground, burning bright beyond the metal grilles.

Something had gone wrong with his vision; the gym was sideways. Someone was shouting his name – _Steve, my name is Steve_ – and there were pairs of trainers pattering about his line of sight, above the green line that marked where the floor met the side of his jaw. A hand reached out, the bile rose up his throat, the hand brushed aside the strands of hair plasteredagainst his forehead with sweat, pulled back immediately, he caught the word 'burning'…

* * *

It had been a long time since this dream had come to pass.

The warmth surrounding his body was not unfamiliar. Blankets; fairly worn out from use, but clean. He kept his eyes closed and waited for the first touch, even though it would be unusual for the examinations to be conducted this early in the morning. Of daylight, he was sure. He had learnt to tell night from day in the darkness of the dorms and the labs to which they were shuttled to and from. They were always brought here at night; things went smoother when there was no one around to hear.

It might have been hours, but nothing came to pass. He drifted in and out of sleep, the back of his neck tensing instinctively each time he was jerked awake by the inevitable burst of violence that ended his his dreams.

But he couldn't take any chances.

A dab of gauze soaked in antiseptic or the brush of an autumn leaf down the side of his forehead? The stab of a syringe or just another chilly draft that made him shiver momentarily? The calm murmur of a doctor, male or female?

 _Saturnine: a mood akin to gloominess or misery. Scatter: when pieces move rapidly apart, helter skelter, after an object breaks. Search: to seek. Shelter: a place far from pain. Sign: anything which could mean anything. Slather: covered with liquid until you ooze. Smite: what you'd do to a dragon, if you knew a dragon at all. Soar: aside from the fire-breathing, a dragon's other state of natural predisposition, which was why you'd want to smite it in the first place. Shhh…_

He knew why he needed to go there, to that place he used to go away to and shut himself off from the world as he knew it, all under guise of that simple mental exercise. That harmless string of words he'd been taught that would at least take his mind off the present without ever actually leaving. _Now pick another letter and start over._

After the fourth round of words he barely recalled any meaning to, he fell asleep and dreamed that he'd reached a clearing in a wood, in which an open casket lay on the sun-dappled grass. He felt like he'd lost something in the way that the sadness had him numb from any sense of heat or the smell of wild-flowers. As he kept leaving the clearing, he kept being drawn back to it, entering and leaving through the same path until he began to wonder if he'd somehow fallen prey to a mirror world, one which would only release him once he accepted the pact of the corpse bathed in sunlight. But he'd no more courage left to give; only a weight which he'd had to bear through from earlier years and narrower shoulders.

Another step to full circle and he jolted awake again, this time his eyes lifting wide open to the very corpse across from him, seated in the chair meant for visitors. Though she looked thinner and her face more gaunt, she smiled at him, even through her thick glasses, as she spoke:

" _Good morning. You were talking in your sleep."_

Judging by the darkness, it must be early still. Not a stranger to this hour, he allowed himself to relax, if only slightly. These night visits would take time to get used to, if they continued. As soon as the pulse in his throat steadied to a reasonable rhythm, he replied: "Thank you."

" _What for?_ "

"You came."

She seemed to look away, suddenly interested in the window of the room they'd shut him in, barely held open by a rusted latch. With her hands clenched into the fabric of her white lab-coat, she reminded him of a girl he'd known, or rather, remembered. The last thing he could remember of her, in fact, right before the door to the examination room had closed, leaving him to do the same as the ensuing silence suctioned out all the other little sounds of the waiting area: the creak of chairs vacated, the beep of the orderlies' pagers clasped onto their belts. The sound of his own breathing. The sound of a lifetime cut off.

When she did look back at him, he found no trace of the smile on her face.

But he remembered this moment. He always would.

" _Steve, I have something to tell you."_

"I'm going to be taken to a safer place. You've got it all planned."

" _I've got it all planned."_

"There'll be no one to hurt me there."

" _There'll be no one to hurt you there."_

"Here's what will happen."

" _I will meet you tomorrow morning for your normal check-up. I've told Dr. Harris it's to do with recent developments with your arm. So,"_ She paused. He remembered she squeezed her eyes shut for a second and let out a short breath. _"So I'll be giving you a dose of something – not like your usual medication – just something that will put you to sleep for a while."_

"And then," he murmured, knowing the answer.

" _Once you wake up, you'll be in a better place. I promise."_

"Just one thing," he spoke again to the figure seated before him. "I need to know your name."

The smile reappeared, though a ghost of its former warmth. _"You already do."_

"I know everyone calls you 'Doctor' or 'Dr. Kliesen'. But what comes in between? You already know my name. It'd only be fair."

Even though she was looking right at him, he felt her drifting away, fading again. His eyes strained until his vision turned runny with moisture as he tried to commit this to memory: her hands were clasped over the material of skirt, a pale lilac, her skin was turning ivory in the lack of light. He'd always thought she had a motherly touch to her face, if he could really imagine what his mother would look like at all. By and by, he felt sleep descending once again. He was too weak to fight it. The vision of her turned murky in the fog, so he couldn't tell whether it was really the shape of the word she mouthed, or just his imagination.

He caught it.

He called out to her in the dark, a final whisper, a name which bloomed like blood from a wound, vibrant, pained.

She was now gone.

* * *

The day after, he was discharged with a clean bill of health. Just to be on the safe side, his coach let him off with a few extra weeks' rest, to 'go somewhere nice' if he'd like. He thought about Spanish coastlines and Norwegian fjords and Dutch houseboats and Irish castles and he really did want to get away, far out of his head, but at the same time, the flat beckoned to him with an empty bed and closed door. He smiled and said he would be all right with a lift home.

"What's wrong?"

It was a question well-asked, threaded into the piped, clear tones of a radio newscast as they drove back from Central Hospital.

"Just under the weather," he replied. He felt the familiar grin ease into place. "Be nice to get home, watch some shows…"

"You don't even have a TV."

"I'll get one. Promise."

No sooner than an hour later, he wondered at the lightness of it. Get a TV, some semblance of pseudo-normalcy to keep him hanging onto what passed for the normal side of the world he cohabited with, and just turn off his brain, quiet down, and let the pretty people behind the glass do the talking. It was long past sun-down, shaping up to a sky sprayed with smoky grey clouds against a moonless night. He then remembered to take a sip out of the mug he suddenly clenched at the handle. An opaque pair of eyes blinked at him from beyond the window in his tiny, mostly abandoned kitchen, shaded by the neon-flicked expanse of London light pollution.

He leaned in to the reflection with his eyes shut, a fugue beginning to rise in him.

 _Welcome home._

The boy lifted his head from the well of his folded arms on the table, a blue eye gleaming beneath strands of blond hair.

* * *

The morning arrived, dappled in grey and blue shadow.

There were asters blooming in someone's garden on his way to nowhere. He had taken an unfamiliar route on purpose, hoping it would distract him from the night before and the many far before that. It was a good time to be out too; just shy of 6 am, street lights still on, his breath clouding before his eyes. The pavements were veined with cracks and speckled with damp dew spots which glistened in whatever light that hit, bits of suburban minutiae that blended into his recollections of inner city streets. It was a revelation in fragments: he wasn't going anywhere.

Time to pick up the pace.

It didn't have to hurt if it didn't have to sink in.

He jogged left, then took a sharp turn off diagonally, just because. If there was any direction to take, he took the opposite, even if it led him past the same combinations of red and mustard brick bungalows, patched up with bare little squares of lawn on which a sparse constellation of children's toys lay. The first fence he ran into, he clambered over without a moment's thought, through the bitter-smelling green mass of hydrangea leaves, lost his bearings halfway, and felt himself tip over, head over heels, on to the bare soil on the other side.

When the world righted itself, he found that the yard he had landed himself in was deserted and the windows of the house facing him were bare, nary a pane of glass to bar the draughts that flowed through the blank spaces. Slowly, he began to take things in: just another empty bungalow, probably a 'For Sale' sign conveniently stamped around somewhere on the other side. Surely the police wouldn't be called in to charge him with trespassing.

But the self-assurance came tinged with something colder. He looked up to the second story.

Another bare window, the space shrinking from the encroaching morning. It made the blonde stand out more, even with her hair pulled back from her face. Behind the black frames of her sunglasses, he knew they were blue.

He took deep breaths, tried to ignore how boneless his legs felt, how the chill down his spine cut.

It felt worse than a dream, if he'd ever had one about feeling like a matchbox tossed about a valley of churning waves, except that the world was shifting right now and he could barely bring himself to his feet. But he did, and he even took a trembling lollop of a step forward, and another, one after the other, until he was on the run again. A gate loomed ahead of him, but gave way as soon as he flung himself upon the rusted iron bars, and he was out again, legs pumping as hard as his heart in time with each aching gasp of breath. Suburbia flowed on with the current of asphalt, grey and slate and muddied brick. And on, and on.

He realized he was lost again when he found himself in the midst of a gaggle of schoolboys on their morning jog. They could have looked more startled, he supposed, at the sight of a random, lumbering moron, out of oxygen to spare and his face as white as the clouds of hot breath he coughed up. Instead, they hovered a respectable distance away, though still drawn in circle around him, hesitatingly repeating the same question: 'You all right?'

Swallowing, the lie still slipped out: 'Yes.'

* * *

Sometime later, he slid out of bed, checked the time on his phone screen, and noted that it was Monday. It had been Friday when he'd run into her; he'd dragged himself home and spent the weekend between his sheets, waking sporadically to use the bathroom and gargle his mouth to get rid of the coppery taint of blood. During these intervals, he checked himself: were the cuts still open, the bruises already forming, anything broken? He rubbed his scar and felt nothing. He searched the mirror for evidence, running a thumb down his jawline to the hollow of his neck.

All clear.

Behind him, the boy gazed at his reflection in the mirror above the sink.

' _Is it really me?'_

He splashed more water onto his face, shivering at how cold it felt, how familiar the shade of blue in the eyes that met his. A fresh tremor of nausea shook his hands, unset the firm line of his jaw.

' _Who are you?'_

"Leave."

There had to be a way to put himself together again. He was here, whole, a name, and not a code, he was here, alone, straightening his back in his bathroom, in his home, and he willed all he could in every sense of now, each and every atom, from the first inhalation to the unclenching of the knot in his gut.

' _What's your name?'_

"Leave. Please."

In spite of everything, he lifted a forearm to swipe off the tears.

" _Please."_

* * *

Day by day, his old routine settled in and the boy in the mirror receded into a glint of blue beyond the glimpse of himself in the glass. Even the old appetite resurfaced, ravenous from weeks of loss, digging into each mouthful that seemed to go down easier now.

Then it was Friday again and he was reminded of how long it had been since he'd crossed his doorstep when his phone buzzed to life with a text: _'howzit?'_

Just one of the fellas. Instinctively, he replied: _'okay_ _'_

' _cool :D_

' _you been up & about so far?'_

' _yeah^^'_

' _awesome_

' _say, you up for a round or ten at Q's tonite?_

' _just us and jo and maybe darren and the missus_

' _watcha say?'_

' _sure :D'_

' _sweet! see ya in 10?'_

' _yeah'_

The odds were, he stacked them mentally as he pulled on a coat and checked beneath the bed for a pair of trainers, that he'd forget for a while. Which was something to look forward to, for a change. Shutting the door behind him, he reminded himself that he had friends, people to hang around and shoot the breeze with at 2 in the morning after a round of riotous, harmless tossing around the local pub-line. He reminded himself that he'd never had a problem with people or fitting in. Three Iron Fist tournaments and barely a word or taunt out of place. He'd be certain he was fine for now, even if the night air made his skin prickle uncomfortably beneath his clothes.

Fortunately, it was a short walk and the tavern was bustling. He walked in to a welcoming chorus of 'heys' and 'how you doins', his mates' husky laughter ricocheting off the glistening rims of their beer mugs. The sudden, unexpected warmth was still a pleasant change from the bitterness of each night visit that had come before; bit by bit, the mask fit more comfortably and the ring of his own laughter in his ear didn't strike him as so alien.

Just for kicks, they started a game of darts, just a simple straight out that he recalled playing a million times before. Thousand and one points to begin with, first one to zero wins, just enough to last a good few hours. With each satisfying thump of each little missile on the cork, despite himself, the dreaded monotony began to creep in.

His mind wandered far back to a bare grey-blue room.

" _My name… is… STEVE!"_

That was right: a name, not another meaningless code.

But –

"FOX!" A hearty clap on the back, a hearty snicker. "Not losing you, are we?"

He shook it off with a smile he could already feel beginning to fade. "Hardly."

"Tired already?"

"With two hundred and thirty under my name on the board? Quit pullin' my leg."

It was a wonder that he managed to pull it off. Even half-focused and a sliver of a memory involving a bare needle poised over his bare arm, slithering its way in and out of his head, he took up his darts and aimed them, one, two, three, listening for the thump, whittling down the time he had left to wallow in.

"Tch, nice one, love."

The sight of all three darts buried in the drywall behind the board sent him off-kilter for just a breath. And it was barely a breath that took him to the opposite side of the room to pick out the needles, casting a sheepish over-the-shoulder chuckle and quip: "And that's why I won a boxing championship."

The ensuing laughter was scattered, almost apologetic for a reason he couldn't bring himself to pinpoint.

* * *

He didn't last much longer after the last round. Throwing out an excuse to use the restroom, he snuck out the back door and headed off into the dark, still aimless. Behind puffy smoke-grey clouds, a curved yellow slice of moon peered down on the rest of the city. As he walked, he took stock of the shadows; a keen habit of his, freshly sharpened from a year on the run.

Shallow pools of black water were blood red. Glistening raindrops from a recent drizzle shone off metal lamp-posts, beads of sweat on gun-metal obsidian. Hot white car-lights, a warning to stay hidden. His own footsteps echoing in a vacuum of sound, each clatter an invitation to run. Even as he stared straight ahead, the way home felt further away with each step forward. The memories were ebbing in, trickling down in rivulets of colors and noises: here was a rare day in the sun, and suddenly, Dr. Kliesen's arm was warm around his shoulders. He looked up at her and noticed that her hair was a paler shade of blonde than his, almost a burning, luminous white in the light.

He'd definitely asked her something then.

" _What are we doing now?"_

He was sure that didn't contain the answer he wanted to remember. But he found himself putting the words into her mouth anyway: _"I thought that we should both have something to remember. We're taking a picture."_

This was when he'd noticed the camera on its tripod, a red light blinking, timing the moment.

" _Relax. Just smile."_

A white flash, purple starbursts erupting across his vision, his little hand hot in hers.

" _What just happened?"_

It was the first time he'd seen her laugh. _"I'll show you later. You had quite an expression."_

She never did. He couldn't blame her; five days later, he'd woken up in a shelter for the homeless, orphaned.

Growing up, he'd barely had time to put the pieces of memories and dreams back together. Those years had seemed transitory at best; in-between foster homes, families, schools, different scraps of temporary lives, just dull and dirty patchwork. It was only later on, as a newly minted adult fresh off his sixteenth birthday, that the gnawing truth of the mind-wipe caught up with him. He had lain on one of the training mats in the gym cum boxing emporium, mentally grasping through the flood that swelled in the recesses of his aching head, tracing each murky backwater of his past for a name or face to latch onto. The tide pulled harder though and he kept drifting further along. On the way forward, he had his first taste of success and learned pride only weighed so much as a Belt. He'd learnt to look well, smile well, look past the faces printed in the morning press and laugh a little at the theatrics of it all.

He hadn't really laughed in a while; sometimes it was like the biggest joke was spelt out in the same letters as his name.

As much as he tried, he wondered if he had just gotten better at staying afloat, holding on to trophies, medals, accolades and whirlwind nights spent in the arms of beautiful strangers, the walks home echoing with laughter that wasn't his own. And then there were the nights ahead.

It might have been hours before he finally reached the apartment. The moon had spirited away behind a passing cloud overhead.

He had left the door ajar again. Had he?

Gently pushing against the wood, he couldn't imagine an abode more forbidding to him than his own home. The hall seemed empty; the click of the key turning in the lock was a loud one, enough to remind him of where he stood. He had already begun to feel his absence; he hurried to the den, looking for the boy, and stopped in his tracks at the sight.

Not for the first time in recent memory, there was a stranger in his room. This one was a man with silver streaked hair slicked back from a narrow face ending in a chiseled jaw. It was hard to read the shade and contour of his figure in the refracted street-lights filtered through the windows, but the shadow cast across the wall diagonal from him was tall and sharp as the glance that snagged him, freezing him to the bone.

" _I've been waiting for you."_ The man spoke. Beneath the light veneer of age, roughened by late nights, stiff drinks and hard knocks, his voice cut smoothly through the hollow of the room. _"I was looking forward to it, I must say."_

He wanted to say something, break apart in a sudden flight of exhilarant violence. But it wouldn't have been enough anyway.

The stranger stepped forward, eyes illuminated between a bar of weak light. Ice blue; an iceberg's tip, close enough to mercurial.

" _Steve. It's good to meet you. Finally."_

The cool, clear tone rang shriller in his head, all too familiar. It was the jarring white jagged edges of the laboratories, the antiseptic burning through the skin of his forearms, the knotted scabs which he would pick at until his nails were the dirty brown of dried blood. It was the same clipped accent, clinically delivered in the wake of a smoking gun. It was the past emerging: rain on black, a funeral shroud, staring up into the same cold, bullet-hole eyes on the wrong side of the trigger, blond strands of hair loose on taut pale skin, running down a line of empty suburban drives too early in the morning, sleepless nights consumed by a lullaby borne of ghost mothers, names that were plucked from uprooted family trees, names which had never been his to call his own.

" _Have you met your mother, Steve? Lovely, isn't she? But a lonely one too."_ The man had closed the space between them, until they almost stood eye to eye. _"I'd have thought she was built for it."_

He thought of her name ( _Emma_ ) and tried to shake off the malignant presence of another ( _"Mother,"_ he'd uttered in disbelief at the name on the Mishima Zaibatsu file and then at the woman pointing a gun to his chest). "I never knew her. How do you expect me to?"

" _She has my eyes. As do you."_

The wall slammed into his back as he recoiled. "… What… what are you…"

" _You may call me 'Grandfather', child."_

It was enough to finally send him reeling. He sank to the floor, palms pressed to his temples, knees drawing up to his chin in an old childish tic as the stranger's gaze honed the full force of its power onto his shivering form.

He didn't dare move ( _WAKE UP_ his mind screamed to no avail). In seconds, he wasn't even a child anymore; he was nothing and nobody, NT01, naked and ashamed.

Grandfather lost no time in venting the scant remains of his patience. " _I suppose I ought to be ashamed. I'm the one to blame; I never told my wife about the girls' training. And your mother was a born secret-keeper, as little as she was. Not a cry, even when it was her own bones she broke. Tougher than the son I'd always wanted."_

He felt the bile rise in his throat at the insinuation. Grandfather rounded on him: _"I'm not disappointed. You've turned out better than I could have imagined."_

"Don't – "

" _You're a born fighter. Blood of my blood."_

"I'm not – "

" _Now, now,"_ The intruder's whisper echoed in his ear. _"You've not had the right training. If you'd been my boy, you'd have turned out grand."_

"I'm not." He fought back. "I'll never be yours."

" _No, you won't. And nothing ever will be, I'll give you that. Just like it isn't yours either."_

He lunged at him then and only struck air, clawing at the streaming end of a long-coat that flowed away from his reach. Grandfather had stepped back in the nick of time and now stood over him as he clutched about on his hands and knees. There was nothing left to prove; just a feral rage balled into knots with fear and the euthanizing pain that only came with being truly alone, stuck deep between the fourth and fifth ribs, choking the words he wanted to spit out.

" _Steve, a stór,"_ – clear, crisp _– "This is not meant to hurt."_

"Fucking come near me and I'll – "

" _A word from experience: the dead don't die. Let alone twice."_

He forced himself to look up, an act that defied the throbbing in his head at no small cost. "Guess I've got one over you there, Pops…"

They'd buried NT01 in a grave headed by paperwork and classified files; this was what he'd managed to glean from the vague goodbye she'd left him with before putting him to sleep for the last time. And then the years had drudged onward, and the gaps in his memory closed in on themselves, only raising a wary hand once every quiet, white moon night when he lay alone and watched the shadows on his ceiling. If there was the smallest consolation, it was that his death had been peaceful. It was the salty taste of the water left on his tongue after she lifted the glass from his lips, the smell of clean nothing as the warmth of her hand stroking his hair ebbed away into nothing.

"I'm not that boy anymore. He was gone a long time ago."

" _But you still see him."_

"… So that's him," The thought made him ache for something he knew was gradually falling apart. "Me."

" _You."_ The older man echoed. _"Who are you, boy?"_

The shadows grew longer around him with the passing of the morning's small hours, unraveling into the minutes until the touch of sunrise would reach the windows. He only knew that it was too late for an answer when he woke up on the floor, his mind astir with his grandfather's parting gift: if not the name, then the man he'd come to know.

 _Who are you?_

He repeated it to himself until his name tore and frayed at theedges, until it felt as wispy in his mouth as his past felt in his recurring dreams.

* * *

" _You never told me your name."_ The boy accused him one day, his sudden appearance in the door of the bathroom not altogether unwelcome. He took his time, finished washing his face, and then turned away from the mirror to face himself.

"Same as yours."

NT01 only stared back. He could feel his eyes on him as he brushed his teeth, changed from last night clothes into a fresh, clean set, and picked out another few to pack into the open wheelie-bag on his bed. He wasn't sure how long he'd be gone.

At odd little moments like this one, he wasn't even sure if he'd ever be back.

" _Do you remember your mother?"_

"Yeah," He contemplated ditching his phone, just for absolution's sake. A second's contemplation done, he slipped it back into his jean pocket. "Blonde hair. Like ours."

" _Why can't I see her?"_

"Because you're better off alone."

" _For now?"_

He didn't know how to counter that. For now, he would contend with zipping up his half-empty bag and setting it down to eventually drag along down the empty hallway, through the lonely living room, and then out the door, down the lift, to the waiting cab parked on the street.

It'd feel wrong to say goodbye though. At least, he had a nagging feeling it would.

One hand on the door-knob; a moment's lapse.

" _Don't leave."_

He didn't want to look back; he didn't want to remember.

The door closed behind him.

To the lift, through the last door to the outside world, a breath of balmy London morning before the cab drew up. He would be going to a place where he could be truly alone for a while; he carried no expectations, expected no answers except maybe the ones he'd have to come to terms with eventually. As the driver switched gears and rolled out onto the main street, he kept his head down. There was something nice and sunny on the radio; a warm touch in the wavering dark.

"Where you headed, guv?"

 _Someplace far, somewhere past that rim of city-line and smog._

All he does is hand him the Post-it, scribbled over with directions.

His eyes are still gritty from no sleep, so he closes them and watches the layers of fluorescence bleed over each other, until they finally lull him.


End file.
